Infants and other incontinent individuals wear absorbent articles such as diapers to receive and contain urine and other body exudates. Absorbent articles function both to contain the discharged materials and to isolate these materials from the body of the wearer and from the wearer's garments and bed clothing. Disposable absorbent articles having many different basic designs are known to the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. Re. 26,152, entitled "Disposable Diaper" issued to Duncan and Baker on Jan. 31, 1967, describes a disposable diaper which has achieved wide acceptance and commercial success. U.S. Pat. No. 3,860,003, entitled "Contractable Side Portions For Disposable Diaper", issued to Buell on Jan. 14, 1975, describes an elasticized leg cuff disposable diaper which has achieved wide acceptance and commercial success.
Disposable diapers with side stretch features have used stretch and force profiles that are compromise solutions to good initial fit, good sustained fit, and low degrees of red marking of the wearer's skin. The need for compromise solutions is the result of a design flaw in current stretch diapers. The design flaw is the use of a diaper-to-stretch feature bond or connection that is parallel to the longitudinal edges or machine direction edges of the diaper. The bond extending parallel to the longitudinal edges of the diaper causes forces to be very similar or equal along the stretch panel from top to bottom when the diaper is applied on a wearer. The equal forces result in either red marking of the skin at the top of the leg, poor sustained fit about the waist, or both.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a disposable absorbent article such as a disposable diaper having improved initial fit, improved sustained fit, and reduced red marking of the wearer's skin.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an absorbent article having a unique side panel feature.
These and other objects of the present invention will be more readily apparent when considered in reference to the following description and when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.